“We thought at first we had hit a lump of metal. We had just dug out one piece and thought this must be a bigger piece. But as we cleared the soil and rubble away we were amazed tọo see it was part of a tank.”

Mr. John Moorό (32), the driver of the excavator, said: “It is definitely a Sherman tank. The part uncovered is the back of the tank where the engine and oil tank is housed. In fact we opened one of the hatches and found the oil tank was still full”

“We dug a little further down and uncovered the tracks of the tank. I am pretty sure there must a complete tank there.”

The main contractors on the site stopped work while a decision was taken whether to remove or leave the tank in the trench. We had to stop work because we are on a fixed price job and we never expected anything like this,” said the workmen, who are sub-contractors.

Workmen said they understood that just after the end of the Second World War there was a scrapyard on the site.